TRON: Endgame
by Asher Wolff
Summary: Set after the events in TRON: Legacy and the downfall of CLU. Kevin Flynn could only go so far by playing God; predicting the fate of the beloved world that he had created had always been too far out of reach. Now, a deadly virus begins to ravage the system, spelling out the ultimate demise of cyberspace itself... OC. Violence, language, and teen angst warning.


Chapter One: Absolute Shenanigans

Let's get something straight here.

I'm _not_ a hero.

In fact, I'm about the farthest you can get from a hero. I'm not saying I'm a villain, though. Ha ha, no sir... For you see, what I AM is a sack of beans—a skin full of mediocrities served with a side of lousy. In short, a loser.

And here at Exhibit A, you can see me, Vesper Chase the Loser. Hello. It's nice to meet you too.

Now, how exactly am I a loser? Well, for starters, there's my name. Did you think it was peculiar? Yeah, so do a lot of other people, including me. I never did make many friends when I had introduced myself with that hideous jumble of letters. V-E-S-P-E-R. I mean, seriously? With a name like that, people will automatically jump to the conclusion that the ones who gave you that name were probably members of the occult or something. But I guess the big picture of it all is, I'm that one kid with no ambition whatsoever, the mope daydreaming and twiddling her thumbs in the back of the class. The other half of it is... well, I don't know exactly how to put it. I suppose being a friendless freak who wears kitten sweaters made by her eccentric mother someone how tallies itself onto the loser-board, but I feel like I'm missing something else... something extremely, undeniably important.

Eh, I'll come back to you on that.

Like I said before, though, I'm not a hero... I'm anything but. What I am, however, is a person with a story; A dangerous story that must be told sparingly, like a dash of salt on a mound of popcorn. As a matter of fact, I'd highly suggest finding said mound of popcorn and maybe kicking your feet up too, because this story is going to take a long, long time to tell.

And it all begins with a bunch of embarrassingly pointless shenanigans.

It was Monday—a school day—and lucky,_ lucky_ me was hit square in the stomach with an ugly case of Influenza. Basically, I was hardly able to stand without tipping over face first into my own vomit. Yet my dad had somehow acquired this really GREAT idea to tow me along to his workplace to assist with "tech support." Right. Sure. There are two problems with that, Dad. When I'm not busy puking over every computer I come into contact with, I'll be lost within a sea of confusion, trying to discern a computer virus from a biological one.

Of course. What could possibly go wrong?

The car ride itself was a bit of a hell-raiser. I was bombarded with a series of instructions on how to operate a computer correctly in the first place, as well as helping other people with them—without being a total asshole, that is. Geez. As if I wasn't already skeptical of the whole thing.

We pulled into the parking lot, a standard black rectangle in the shadow of a gleaming, silvery building. Averdeen Tech—home to the computer nerds, and the cause of one too many of my dad's headaches. To be honest, the building itself was kind of daunting... its height alone was enough to make my stomach churn. Yet my dad was completely unfazed. He grabbed me by the shoulder and led me through the swinging doors, thrusting me into his disgusting habitat of office desks and clipboards.

We were greeted by the receptionist, a young woman with her hair pinned into a tight bun and her faced twisted into a gut-wrenching smile. Soon after that, I learned that every other greeting we received sounded exactly the same, as if being read from a script:

"Good morning."

"Good morning, how are you?"

"I'm doing well, thank you for asking. How about you?"

And so on. Everyone wore the same plastered smile, and everyone enunciated in the same stiff, robotic way. It was unnatural.

"You see, Vesper," said my dad as we passed through the rows of office cubicles, "This is what it's like to be successful."

"Yeah, don't remind me," I grumbled.

At this rate, failure seemed more appealing. If being successful meant being trapped in a perfect world of post-it notes and artificial plants, then maybe I didn't _want_ to get anywhere in life.

We had finally reached my dad's office. It was a bit more spacious than what I had been expecting, a stark contrast from the cubicles out in the main area. Two desks with accompanying computers stood at each end of the room, and a spiral-corded telephone on the left flank of each keyboard completed the perfectly boring look.

"Remember what I told you?" my dad whispered in my ear.

I sighed. "If anyone calls, be nice, ask them what the problem is, talk them through it as best as I can, and refer to the manual if I need help," I recited stiffly. "Only—"

"I know you'll be _excellent_, Vesper," my dad cut in, beaming at me. He took his place at the computer by the door and logged on. "Let me know if you need anything," he called.

I groaned, wondering what I had gotten myself into. This whole thing, this "take your kid to work" deal was probably just some act he had thrown together to test my communication skills, which I have to admit were sort of lacking. So I'm not the biggest social butterfly. Big deal. In the grand scheme of things, did that even matter all that much?

A telephone rang. I jumped at the noise, just now realizing how abnormally quiet it had been since we had entered the office. My dad answered it without hesitation, as if he had known that the phone would ring just then. Right, I forgot that this was all completely routine for him. I stifled a sigh of annoyance, and sank back into my chair.

A sudden "_WHAT_?!" sent me airborne for the second time that morning. I glanced nervously over at my dad, who seemed to be struggling to keep the phone to his ear.

"What do you mean?!" he bellowed. I leaned against my chair, trying to make out what the voice on the other end was saying. I could only imagine what could possibly put my dad into such a fury.

"Yes—yes, _fine_," my dad snapped. "I'll be there in a minute." He paused, then added in a cold voice, "I warned you, you know. I warned you about that Jefferson-idiot. If he's not fired by the time I get down those stairs, you'll have bigger problems to worry about, believe me." He slammed the phone against the receiver, as if that settled the matter.

Another awkward silence crept into the room as my dad sat there, his back to me and his shoulders stiff with rage. Again, I wondered what could possibly have been travelling through his mind. My dad, although a little strange sometimes, was by all means not an angry man. So what was his deal now?

He swivelled around in his chair. He seemed to have calmed down (at least, that's what it looked like), for there was not a single crease in his face. It scared me.

"I'm sorry you had to hear that, Ves," he said in a somewhat pleasant tone. "Something happened downstairs, and they need me on the floor... do you think you can hold down the fort until I get back?"

"Er... yeah, of course," I replied as casually as I could. _No, of course not. What are you, nuts?_

My dad smiled, a startling transition from his previous hysterics. "My little girl, all grown up," he gushed before flying out of the office.

I heaved a great big sigh when the door clicked shut. My dad was absolutely insane if he thought that I could handle his job all on my own. And frankly, his little "temper tantrum" didn't exactly make matters better. Yet he needed me, and there was no way I was just going to abandon him.

I mean, I'd be grounded for a _year_ if I did something like that.

I decided to push away the thought and booted up my computer, which flicked on almost instantly. Strange. It was already logged on... but not onto my dad's account. Perhaps it was a co-worker's...?

Shrugging, I tried to log off, and was promptly greeted by a message box:

FOLLOWING PROGRAM(s) MUST BE CLOSED BEFORE SYSTEM LOG OFF:

:/ENCOM-datafiles

I narrowed my eyes, studying the title of the program carefully. Encom, Encom... where had I heard that name before? It seemed strangely familiar, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. _Maybe it was in an ad or a magazine or something_, I thought absentmindedly. _Oh well. Better close it out._

I clicked on the opened files, and me, being a nosy little prat, had to get one look before exiting out.

What I saw next was undeniably strange.

Etched onto the computer screen were lines and lines of incredibly incomprehensible code (to me, at least), all appearing and disappearing at once. The various numbers and letters seemed to be deleting and inserting themselves, as if some invisible person had taken hold of the keyboard.

And for some strange reason, I couldn't take my eyes off it.

I mean, I understood absolutely none of it, and yet I found it entrancing. _It's a glitch in the software... it has to be_, I thought. I certainly wasn't typing anything, and last I checked, invisible people weren't real. _Definitely a_ _glitch._

Suddenly the "typing" stopped. Something about that disturbed me, though I wasn't quite sure why. Shouldn't that have been a relief? After all, the computer could've been uploading a virus, for all I knew.

I leaned forwards and inspected the screen of the computer. Again, I didn't understand a bit of it. Just a load of pointless garble.

"What is this crap, anyway?" I muttered aloud, skimming through the lines of code. "'Space Paranoids?' 'The Grid?' I've never—"

My eyes fell over a few new words, and my heart instantly began to pound.

"Laser control."

Yeah, okay, that was probably nothing. Probably just a prank, maybe. But the next thing that happened was worse. Far worse. And right in that moment, I can assure you that I was very, very afraid.

_"Enter Vesper."_

At this point, I really regret not having turned around.

Why, you ask? Simple. That way I could've seen what it was that hit me in the back and made me pass out.

Yeah, you heard me right. There was a blinding burst of light that practically whitewashed the walls of the room, a sharp pain in the upper left corner of my back, and _splat_. Down I went, like a drop of rain hitting the pavement.

And this is where the story—my impossible, dangerous story—begins.


End file.
